A Republican state Senate election reform bill aimed at ensuring that those who register and vote verify that they are domiciled in New Hampshire received a mostly chilly reception at a crowded State House public hearing Tuesday.

The overwhelming majority of dozens of people who testified at a public hearing criticized the bill as an attempt to intimidate voters and stifle participation. But the state’s longtime top election official saw it differently.

“I support this because I believe … you have to try to find the best way to balance that you want as many people as possible to be able to vote, and on the other hand, you want a process that a lot of people trust and believe is working, is right and technically secure,” Secretary of State William Gardner, a Democrat, told the Senate Election Law and Internal Affairs Committee.

“We’re not denying anyone who shows up at the polls to be able to vote,” he said. “We’re just saying that we want to be able to say that everyone knows that those votes are valid and true. And that helps the turnout, and that’s been our tradition here.”

A comprehensive amendment to the bill, authored by Sen. Regina Birdsell, R-Hampstead, is expected to receive the committee’s endorsement – most likely on a 3-2 party-line vote – next week. The full Senate is also expected to pass the bill – also most likely along party lines – the following week.

If passed by the Senate, the bill would then move to the House. Although Republicans also hold a strong majority in the House, the bill's fate is less certain there.

At the lengthy hearing, the most frequently voiced complaint was the bill’s provision that if new a voter does not present proof of being domiciled in a New Hampshire community within 10 or 30 days of registering – depending on where he or she lives – local election officials would be empowered to go to the voter’s home to seek documentation, or ask local police to do so.

Voters who fail to produce proof of being domiciled in the state -- in one of at least 10 ways listed in the bill -- could be prosecuted for voter fraud, and if found guilty, would be subject to a civil penalty of up to $5,000.

The bill includes some examples of how someone who has been in the state fewer than 30 days can verify an intent to make New Hampshire his or her domicile. They include a New Hampshire driver’s license, motor vehicle registration or non-drivers identification card; a New Hampshire hunting or fishing license; a letter verifying residency at a New Hampshire college or university; proof of enrolling a child in a public school; a tax form with the person’s address or a utility bill.

Under the amendment – first described by Birdsell in an interview with WMUR.com nearly two weeks ago – new voters must back up their claims of a New Hampshire domicile with “a verifiable act or acts” showing that they are not in the state temporarily.

“It’s a trust but verify (bill),” Birdsell said Tuesday. “It basically says that you can’t just have it in your head that you are domiciled in the state for the purpose of voting. It has to be coupled with a verifiable act or acts carried out with that intent.”

“The requirements are the same whether you are registered to vote prior to an election, registering within 30 days of an election, or on the same day as the election,” she said. “If you’re domiciled in a dormitory, you just need verification that you established residency at an institution of higher learning. You can also show a mortgage. You can use a cellphone bill – anything that shows an intent that you are planning on being domiciled.”

Those who register on Election Day and do not have documents verifying residency with them at the time will be required to return to a town hall that is open at least 20 hours a week within 10 days of the election with those documents. Those who reside in communities whose town hall is open fewer than 20 hours weekly will have 30 days.

Despite the tightened requirements, she said, “The intent is that everyone who goes to the voting booth on Election Day gets a chance to vote.”

For those who do not return to their town halls with documentation, their local checklist supervisors will be responsible for obtaining the verifying information by requesting that police officers on routine patrol visit the address provided the voters; ask the Secretary of State to send a letter to the address given by the voters; or have at least two supervisors or other municipal officials visit the address to verify the address.

Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union, noted that under the bill, if a voter fails to present documentation verifying residency, he or she will have their names removed from their local checklist. And, he said, “The bill goes so far, at least by my reading, to effectively criminalize voters” by stating that they “shall be subject to the penalties of wrongful voting.”

“This is punishable by a civil fine of up to $5,000,” Bissonnette noted. “That is a very big deal in our view.”

Opponents said the requirements add a significant burden on town officials and police.

Leslie Enroth, a former Sutton selectwoman, asked, “How many trips is a policeman supposed to make before he can with confidence say, ‘I never reached that person now, and therefore, I don’t believe they were living there” on Election Day?' That’s a lot to ask of a policeman.”

“One visit isn’t going to find someone to talk to,” she said. “Perhaps they’re at work. Perhaps they’re going for a long walk.”

Enroth also said, “The changes to your voter registration form are so long and so complicated that had they now become a literacy test.”

“In our country, people have died for the right to vote. Why are we making it harder now?” she asked.

Kari Lerner of Chester asked if the state will provide communities with “additional funds” to have police of local officials follow up on the affidavits.

She noted that New Hampshire’s population is “graying,” and said, “This is once again another hurdle for young people to become involved and to become engaged. Not helpful.”

“Our right to vote is a fundamental building block of our state and our nation, and to enact legislation that puts a burden that gets in the way of voting is egregious. It’s a fundamental assault on our basic right to vote,” Lerner said.

“I don’t like the idea of police officers and public officials banging on the door demanding papers,” Lerner added. “Is that who we are? Is that who we’re becoming?”

Liz Tentarelli, president of the League of Women Voters of New Hampshire, agreed that the domicile affidavit is complicated.

“I can see a lot of people signing it and not really comprehending that they need to come back later and present further evidence,” she said. “They then become subject to these knocks on the doors, to feeling like a criminal.”

“This is very hard for the League of Women voters to watch,” she said. She said the bill is "an attempt to change the voting laws based on unsubstantiated claims and fears of widespread voter fraud.”

But Gardner said, “I have never testified on a piece of election legislation that I thought would hurt the voter turnout.”

He said New Hampshire’s turnout has been increasing during the last 30 years, “and the rest of the country has been going in the other direction.”

In the 2016 general election cycle, about 750,000 people voted in New Hampshire, and Gardner said 6,033 voters filled out domicile affidavits because they did not present identification at the polling place. They were sent follow up letters, he said, and 458 came back marked as undeliverable.

In the presidential primary, he said, 2,657 people filled out domicile affidavits and 283 were sent back as undeliverable.

“This presidential election, like every other presidential election going back a dozen years, there has been at least one (person) prosecuted for voter fraud,” Gardner said.

He said that a nationwide Gallup poll conducted prior to the November election found that 55 percent of Americans believe voter fraud exists.

“How do we deal with that?” he asked. “It’s a problem if that many people believe that there has been voter fraud.”

Senate Democratic Leader Jeff Woodburn of Dalton asked Gardner why he believes there is a need to act “because a certain portion of the population believes there is voter fraud.”

“My concern is these outrageous claims about buses (bringing out-of-state residents to New Hampshire to vote), and fraud and whatnot, that they do so much to harm our New Hampshire primary,” Woodburn said.

“Don’t these efforts to continue to harass voters, and President Trump’s accusations that our elections here are not clean and not fair, don’t these harm the New Hampshire primary and couldn’t we eventually lose it?”

Gardner said, “We all know that no one has ever taken a picture of a bus that had 20 or 30 people walk off and go vote.”

But he said, “Candidates want to come to a place where they know the vote is fair and accurate. And part of that is knowing that it is all done in a legitimate process. But if, in some way, this legislation denied people the right to vote, it would be very different for me.”

State Sen. Donna Soucy, D-Manchester, noted that an updated version of the bill requires a same-day registrant to initial a paragraph of the registration form acknowledging that if they do not provide evidence of their domicile in the allotted time period, “I understand that law enforcement or other officials may be taking actions to verify my domicile at this address.”

“Isn’t that so intimidating that some people will walk away and lose their right to vote or feel that their right is being threatened?” she asked.

“It would certainly be intimidating for a person who has doubts if they are able to show that information,” Gardner said. “But how intimidating would it be for a person who just came without it and forgot it or made a mistake? I would hope that someone who is eligible to vote would not be intimidated by that.”

“It shouldn’t be an obstacle course to go to the polls to exercise your right to vote,” said attorney Paul Twomey, a prominent voting rights attorney who has occasionally worked in the past with the state Democratic Party.

Twomey said he believes the bill is vulnerable to constitutional challenges on several fronts.

But Assistant Attorney General Brian Buonomano told WMUR.com that while Attorney General Joseph Foster has taken no position on the bill, the attorney general’s office is confident that it would withstand a court challenge.